P51 Mustang

A red-tailed P-51D Mustang cutting through cloud cover, built as a personal animation piece blending traditional and AI-assisted workflows.

Breakdown:

✈️ Aircraft — Modeled and textured in Maya, with material work finished in Photoshop for that weathered aluminum-skin and invasion-stripe detail.

🧑‍✈️ Pilot — Base mesh generated in Meshy from pilot concept art, then fully retopologized in Maya for clean animation-ready topology.

🦴 Rigging — Both aircraft and pilot rigged using a setup I picked up from a fellow VFX artist on my team — control structure tailored for smooth flight-dynamics animation (banking, prop wash, subtle fuselage flex).

🎬 Animation & Rendering — Animated and rendered entirely in Maya, focusing on believable flight motion and camera work to sell scale and speed against the cloudscape.

🎨 Compositing — Final atmosphere, haze, and color grade composited in After Effects to tie the plane into the sky plate and push depth.